The Silence
by Molten-Ashes
Summary: "They never expected it here; never here in a neutral city of culture and noise..."
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers

Please R&R

(Warning: Contains Death, Suicide and lots of angst. Sorry no funny stuff today, I'm feeling depressed... hope you enjoy.)

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><p>The Silence had come to Praxus.<p>

Femmes and Mechs had occasionally talked of it. A once good and prosperous city or town would vanish into the Cybertronian night, and in the cycles following it would fall silent, building after building, frame by frame until nothing remained but shattered frames and dreams.

The Silence had originated in Kaon and had greedily followed the wake of Decepticons wherever they marched, swallowing every frame not pulled from the rubble fast enough.

They never expected it here; never here in a neutral city of culture and noise.

With a pained cough, a black and white plated mech splattered in the life fluids of himself and others, managed to push a deactivated frame from his torso, the grey mech having already been claimed by the migrating Silence as it flopped back into the ash and gooey fluids like a discarded rag doll.

He heaved himself up into a sitting position energy spent; whimpering when he tried to stretch out his doorwings, the crumpled appendages scraping along the slab he now leaned against in his shelter of metal. His golden optics flickered in dull interest as a femme, distraught with a dead sparkling in her grasp wandered by covered in grime and energon, her expression blank as she tried to understand that the spark she had previously been nurturing for at least a few vorns was dead. Parental programming was a curse when the Silence claimed its victims.

He tried to get his vocaliser to make a protest as the femme picked up a discarded rifle of Decepticon origin and held it to her helm, leaning down to kiss her dead youngling and snuggle it to her chest plates before the resounding crack of a gunshot split the Silence that had descended over the tortured city before it was swallowed, tapering off with an ill sounding echo.

His gold optics, one fractured and slightly blurry watched it all in horror, his white servo, covered in grime and fractures of stress lifting slightly as if to catch the femme as she toppled to the frame strewn ground clutching her deceased offspring tightly, a hole in her helm that sparked and smoked releasing the smell of charred internals that made the downed mech watching wrinkle his olfactory sensor in disgust.

He looked down at his legs and pedes with a wince, one was completely crushed, the other in a startlingly fine condition that made him want to laugh hysterically. Instead he thumped his helm against the slab of metal that supported him, releasing a whimper when only one point of his once majestic ruby chevron registered feeling as the point ground into the slab. The injury enquiry he sent out to his systems made him wince as enough errors to fill several data-pads was thrown across his vision. He quickly shut them down as he saw the internal leaking error, it wouldn't be long till he bled out then…

Pain hadn't come yet and hopefully it wouldn't. He would deactivate here in his beloved city before any of that happened. Speaking of said city, he gazed out of his dying place and searched the now relatively flat area surrounding the now decimated square that he had been patrolling when the first bombs came to cause the Silence.

He nearly wailed as he saw buildings and towers had buckled and leaned against their stubby charred neighbours burning from the inside out, the metal that held them slanted, groaning feverishly as embers and ash fell from the heavy smog of destruction above like snow. A lamppost bent and curled over itself from the heat and flames that licked at its base flickered with light, throwing partial illuminating beams onto the broken frames of mechs, femmes and sparkling that were strewn around haphazardly visions of terror and horror twisting their faceplates.

Silence reined here in this space.

Only… there was a shuffle and a small terrified whimper as he gave a shuddering cough of surprise, energon trickling from between his denta as a tingle of pain began to worm its way into his processor. He rebooted his vocaliser as the scurrying stopped just before his alcove in the rubble and his voice came out with a rasping whine, "Who's there?"

The creature or lucky Cybertronian squealed softly in terror. "I'm Bluestreak." The childish voice stammered back, "Who're you… sir?" the voice asked as if just remembering his manners, a small grey helm with a blunt red chevron peered around the slab to stare at the downed enforcer that sat dying calmly in front of the burning Crystal Gardens. It was a Cybertronian then.

Golden optics scanned the child that trotted into the alcove, wide baby blue optics staring appalled at the deactivated frame that lay beside the downed mech. "Can you help me find my Carrier?" the youngling asked with a shudder, his little winglet fluttering in horror as he gazed at the dirt covered, crumpled set of the mech.

"My name is Prowl." He replied soothingly his vocaliser flushing occasionally with pained static, beckoning the youngling to sit next to him, the small mech was almost in mint condition had it not been for his grazed knee and elbow joints. "I was an enforcer. Don't worry; your carrier has probably gone to get help. Come sit and wait for her, it's dangerous out there." A lie about the fate of his perhaps, but the child needed to hear it.

"Why is everybody deactivated?" the child whispered, shuffling closer and snuggling into his already aching side, making him wince slightly in discomfort.

Prowl sighed, his vents flushing air that stirred the dry dirt that wasn't currently being clogged by his energon, steadily leaking from his frame. Instead of answering, he soothingly began to croon, opening a public channel that all of Praxus had access to and had once been used for enforcer news and ring ups. His lullaby echoed through the radios of those still struggling to live, gently lulling those who were dying to Primus with smiles. Others, stronger, but still slowly leaving the world of the living began to sing too.

The Silence broke and Prowl smiled through the energon that leaked from his mouth as the youngling was sent softly into recharge as the world outside the alcove of rubble died and burned.

The Silence would come here eventually.

But for now, the cherished sound of noise, took its place.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers

Please R&R

(The final part of The Silence. I hope you like it!)

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><p>Prowl sighed, continuing his energy consuming lullaby through his radio as his vision became increasingly blurry in the darkness of the death curtain of smoke and ash that clung to the sky. According to his chronometer it would have been around halfway through the cycle, a time he would have been starting his patrol shift with his two partners, just like he had two orns ago.<p>

He blearily wondered what had become of them both, were they alright? Were they listening to his song even as rubble threatened to crush or burn them?

Lifting himself from the continuing circles of his train of thought he croaked out another few words that were echoed by the remaining citizens still trapped in the destruction, he looked down at the youngling that had decided to camp with him in his resting place until his Carrier maybe returned. The child was curled tightly to him chirring softly in his recharge, halfway under his arm that held his acid pellet rifle that was primed should a lingering Decepticon attempt to abduct the precious youngster.

With a half aware grumble, pausing in his song, he shifted his weight along the slab, leaving a gruesome trail of energon behind him. A terrified chorus of citizens on his radio begged him to continue singing, 'Keep the Silence away!' one choked out, clearly on his last intakes, buried somewhere nearby.

Prowl, as was his duty to his dead city under the oath he had taken as a rookie enforcer to Serve and Protect the citizens, even as the Silence claimed them, again took up the song singing like his Carrier used to when an Acid Rainstorm would have him hiding under his berth in terror. 'I'll sing you to the Well' he promised, commanding his auto-repair systems to whirr into life and seal off the energon he was bleeding out so he could continue his Silence defying song. 'I shall follow you after you have all gone'.

The eerie Silence was once again broken by the croons of the dying, calm in their work as they coaxed the other, weaker members of the Praxian population into the Well with a smile. 'Thank You, Enforcer.' The dying whispered, their voices curling around Prowl as he continued, all the while keeping a guarding, brooding eye on the youngster that recharged close to him. 'Primus bless our singing guardian.'

One by one, they left, their voices tapering off as lack of energon, or just sheer exhaustion killed off the precious few that could have been saved. 'Was nobody coming?' Prowl wondered as Bluestreak awoke, his bright little optics slightly dimmed with lack of proper energon, the youngling shifting to sit on a small boulder like projection of metal and began to draw on a data-pad that Prowl had withdrawn from his subspace. 'Don't they here our song?'

Finally, the last voice mingling with Prowl's over the radio quietened with a weak hiss, the last words of the femme cooing into the already weak signal. "Thank you Guardian, for keeping the Silence away."

"May your journey be peaceful," He said in return, allowing the song to hold for the last few precious notes before it died and was swallowed by the Silence, leaving the neutral city of Praxus enveloped in its merciless coils.

'One more to go', Prowl thought pitifully as the youngling, having grown bored of his drawing, snuggled back up to him for the warmth of his feverishly hot frame as the orn began to end.

"Prowl?" Bluestreak asked, getting a weak grunt of acknowledgement in return. "Why did you stop singing?"

"The others can't hear it anymore." Prowl said softly, truthfully in the face of the deactivation that loomed over him. He paused slightly, was that a white light beyond a hole in the slab? "They went to recharge."

"Oh." The youngling whispered in childish wonder, reaching for Prowl's free hand that didn't weakly clutch a scary looking Enforcer class rifle that rested, aimed and primed at the entrance to their shelter, upon the already deactivated frame of another mech that had died, "Are we going to recharge too?"

Prowl smiled an honest smile, "Yes. And when you wake up, you'll see your Carrier again, and this will be like a bad dream."

"Will I see you again?" the grey mechling asked hopefully, still so full of life, even as his infant systems starved to deactivation.

"Of course." Prowl chuckled thickly as another trickle of energon leaked from his lip plates, his auto repair finally giving under the strain of trying to keep the Praxian alive. Bluestreak offered him a wide grin and snuggled closely to the downed mech, purring as his recharge cycle kicked in.

"May your journey to the Well be safe young one." Prowl sighed, allowing his helm to rest back against the slab of metal as the white light began to grow brighter through the holes in the slab. Voices had started whispering and dancing through the Silence allowing Prowl to catch snippets of phrases. The enforcer frowned as he allowed his optics to finally dim slowly offline, his last sight of the world, his beloved Crystal Gardens that hissed and crackled with fires that consumed them and the youngling that wouldn't live to see another orn. With one final smirk in the face of the Silence that waited patiently to claim the last citizens of Praxus, Prowl gave one last crooning note of his lullaby as the white light through the cracks became increasingly bright, before everything went dark.

He would later reboot in the city of Iacon, Bluestreak snuggled up beside him with an infuriatingly illogical mech called Jazz diligently watching over him with a sombre smile.

Prowl would never sing his lullaby again, but in the darkness of the Cybertronian night, in a decimated City that sill smoked and burned, the Silence was broken by the ghosts of the sparks of those who had died, singing their Enforcer Guardian's lullaby in the night...


End file.
